An Investigation into How Emotional Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Can Collectively Lead and Promote a Healthy Work Environment

Principal Investigator
Vijay Pereira
Department
Humanities and Social Sciences
Focus Area
Humanities & Social Sciences
An Investigation into How Emotional Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Can Collectively Lead and Promote a Healthy Work Environment

The key focus of this study is to investigate the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Emotional Intelligence (EI) in a business-management context. AI has become a topic of interest among scientific, business, and academic communities. Thus, AI operates using information and computer technologies that are capable of doing intelligent tasks, whereas EI is aimed at improving our emotional and psychological well-being at work and in our lives. Therefore, in contrast, AI promises some workforce efficiencies as well as disruptions in a range of business and pubic contexts such as health care systems, business organizations, and educational institutions. AI has the ability to learn and understand natural language. But can we really trust AI with questions about emotional competence at the workplace? Despite pre-arranged mechanical speaking, does AI have the capacity for and to truly understand human emotions, and managing relationships at work? Furthermore, empathy plays a crucial role assisting emotional competence. How can AI really understand empathy in a complex business environment?

What is missing from the discourse of AI and EI is whether applications of AI need to incorporate aspects of EI so as to countervail the adverse effects of AI-adoption? Conversely, what aspects of EI can contribute to effective design of AI applications? The pervasiveness of AI applications persists in the realms of workplace, consumer service and public service interactions as well as across cross-cultural encounters. This renders a thoughtful consideration of EI in the implementation of AI applications. Therefore, we systematically aim to study the use of EI in 1) design; 2) implementation; and 3) impacts of AI on a range of business and cultural contexts. In doing so, it will offer a critique, relying on a rather sparse and disparate set of studies that have begun exploring aspects of EI in AI design, adoption, and implementation.

An Investigation into How Emotional Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Can Collectively Lead and Promote a Healthy Work Environment